Exoplanet 1

Alarms sounded all around Private Chester Montgomery. The bright red flashes from the alarms burned his eyes as he fought to open them for the first time in nearly a thousand years. His body tingled from having been in a medically induced coma that had preserved his body and mind all this time. Fresh air rushed into the glass tube that had kept him safe, the hiss of the air bringing some strength back to his body.

“Get out of there, Chuck!” Sergeant James Copperfield shouted from outside the tube. “The natives must have some sort of radars that picked us up when we entered their atmosphere. The computer initiated an emergency landing when they tried to engage our ship with long-range missiles.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” Chester shouted in reply.

Chester exited the glass tube, his arms shaking uncontrollably as he lifted his body. His shaking arms provided little support as his legs wobbled when they connected to the metal floor below the tube, but with every breath Chester felt himself getting stronger. The stench of decay filled the ship as it rocked back and forth from narrowly avoiding the explosion of enemy fire. Chester had no choice but to ignore the shattered tubes that resembled his own, but had not survived the journey from Earth. Those who had survived the journey broke the rusting seal that shielded their weapons and equipment during their voyage. The first to collect their equipment was Chester. He grabbed one of the perfectly preserved M1 Garand’s that lined the left wall of the storage room and two of the emergency equipment bags that had been prepacked by the soldiers before takeoff. Chester was also the first of the surviving troops to make his way into the crash room. He shoved his bags into the storage bin below his seat, strapped himself to the metal chair, and placed an oxygen mask over his face. Chester noticed a small heart-shaped locket in front of his chair that must have fallen out of one of the bags he shoved under his seat. The last soldier into the crash room was Sergeant Copperfield. He slammed the heavy door shut behind him and twisted the latch closed with a hiss as the room locked out the stench of decaying corpses.

“Hold on tight, boys,” Sergeant Copperfield said after he secured his oxygen mask. “Once we clear the atmosphere the crash room should eject from the ship and lower us to safety, but it will be a bumpy ride.”

With a loud pop, the soldiers held tightly to their seats as they felt the room begin its freefall from the ship. The soldiers let out shouts of pain as their bodies connected with their restraints when the crash room’s parachutes opened and slowed their fall. The soldier’s disconnected their oxygen tanks from the walls and attached them to their backs, then rushed from the crash room moments after it contacted the ground. Within minutes a perimeter had been set around the crash room and the soldiers had begun solidifying their positions, just as they had been trained to do on Earth.

“I don’t remember these radios being so heavy,” Private Richard Haron complained.

“You’ve had like a thousand years to lose all your muscles, Rick,” Corporal Andrew Johnson replied. “It’s a miracle that we can walk at all considering how long we were out.”

“Andy, do you think people on Earth are still walkin’ around like this in the year 2948?” Rick responded with a chuckle. “Or do you think they all have, like, robots that do all their walkin’ for them? That would be swell!”

“Quiet!” Sergeant Copperfield snapped as the two snickered. “I don’t want to hear you two goofing off like you did back home. I don’t see any signs of the rest of the fleet. This isn’t some battlefield in Germany where we’ve got air support to do all the heavy lifting, it’s a new planet. I need you focused.”

Sergeant Copperfield motioned at Chester then the crash room which was lying in the middle of the perimeter the team had set up. Chester nodded and made his way with another private back into the crash room and collected the remaining oxygen tanks that were originally placed there for the soldiers that had died in transit. They grabbed all the bags from underneath the seats and made their way back out to the other soldiers.

“We need to put some distance between us and the crash room,” Sergeant Copperfield said. “That impact site is nothing but a flare that will lead the natives right to us.”

The handful of troops marched away from the crash room and into the brush that was nearly identical to an Arizona landscape back on Earth. The group traveled for what felt like an eternity as the sun of the planet beat down on them.

“Sarge, I’ve been keeping track of the sun from our position ever since we landed and I could swear we have been traveling for an entire day now but still no sign of sunset,” Rick said as he wiped sweat from his forehead.

“This planet must spin slower than Earth,” Sergeant Copperfield replied as he caught his breath.

“Sarge, call me a son of a gun, but I don’t know that it is spinning at all,” Rick said again. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know,” Sergeant Copperfield said. “Questions like that would be better left to the scientists who were supposed to be with us. All I know is even with the extra water left behind by our fallen brothers in the ship, in this kind of heat it will not last long. We have to find a way of procuring food, water, and breathable air or we will only last until these supply sacks are empty.”

“Sarge, I think we may be in luck,” Chester said as he turned around and faced over the peak of a hill next to the group.

Thirty feet from Chester were the remnants of a highway. There were broken down machines that resembled cars covered in dust and sand. Down the highway was a large city, seemingly abandoned, but with smoke rising from several roof tops.

“You think there is anyone there?” Chester asked his superior.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Sergeant Copperfield replied. “But if we have any chance of surviving, I’d say its better in the wilderness than with hostiles.”

“Maybe not,” said a gentle voice from behind the troops.

The soldiers turned in surprise and drew their weapons on a young woman who stood before them dressed in rags.

“Who are you?” Sergeant Copperfield asked in bewilderment. “How do you speak our language?”

“I ask you the same thing,” the woman responded in broken English as she slowly backed away, fearing the weapons of the aliens that stood before her.

“Sarge,” Chester said as he lowered his weapon. “Maybe guns aren’t the way to get answers out of her.”

Sergeant Copperfield looked at his men, realizing how frightening they must be to the woman who had approached them. He motioned for his troops to lower their weapons, then for Chester to approach the woman.

“My name is Chester Montgomery,” he said as he laid his weapon down on the ground in front of the woman. “I’m a soldier in the United Sates Army and this is what is left of the men who traveled with me from our home planet. Our people received a distress call from this planet a very long time ago, but the technology of my people was not to a point where we could reach your planet in time to save it. Our leaders sent us and a group of scientists to study your planet and the remains of its people since we could not help you. Clearly things did not go according to plan in more ways than one.”

“You soldier?” the woman said in amazement. “Could you fight bad guys going into that city so I can see the boomer up close? Alguz Clan control most of that city so me never seen it, just the fireballs it shoots into the sky.”

Chester looked back to Sergeant Copperfield for input.

“The boomer she is referring to may be the weapon that shot us down,” Sergeant Copperfield said. “If there is a weapon like that then there may be electricity and advanced people. If that survived this planet’s doomsday then maybe so did the power they used to contact Earth. If it did, maybe we can use it to contact Earth again. Hopefully, they have advanced enough back home to reach and rescue us before the end of our lifetime.”

“I take you to boomer. You protect me from Alguz Clan. Deal?” she asked.

“Deal,” Sergeant Copperfield replied.

As they traveled into the city, the woman bonded with Chester over the beautiful heart-shaped locket he found in the crash room, which he gave to her as a peace offering. Chester accidentally broke the seal on his oxygen mask while removing the locket but realized that the planet’s air was not toxic in the process. The group managed to make it through the demolished city without conflict. They found a relatively intact building near the edge of the city with a large cannon mounted on its roof. Once inside, an English translation book that was covered in dust sat next to the cannon’s computer systems. The translation book allowed Chester to read the computer screen and uncover that the canon was attached to a solar power source placed there by this planet’s old civilization.

“If I’m translating this right, this canon is meant to automatically lock onto and strike meteors that enter the planet’s atmosphere,” Chester said looking up from the computer screen. “It must have locked onto our ship thinking it was some sort of meteor and shot us down. That was the doomsday the people here feared, and it actually happened. There is documentation for everything here. Some in English, some in this strange native language.”

“How did a translation book even get here?” Sergeant Copperfield asked.

“According to the documents, Earth has seriously advanced since we were there,” Chester replied. “After the world banded together to design our fleet in 1948, they lost contact with us and a few hundred years later sent a single more advanced ship called ‘Titan’ and an army sized crew to finish the job they started with us. They must have advanced so much that they were able to beat us here. All these documents and the translation book were left by one of the crew members, a linguist, who separated himself from the rest sometime after they were also shot down by this canon in Earth’s year 2541. He documents the crew going crazy here and this new world becoming a ‘mad house’ as he puts it.”

“So if our arrival time was anywhere close to what it should have been then this linguist wrote all this four hundred years ago?” Andy asked.

“Exactly,” Chester replied. “The crew that came here must have started to populate this world and that must be why she speaks English. Granted the language seems dumbed down over time, but still clearly English.”

“I suppose we have our new plan,” Sergeant Copperfield said. “We’ll find someone in this post-apocalyptic world that still has a shred of humanity and find a way to use this technology to contact Earth and get out of here.”

“I think we already found someone who can take us to a place where we can thrive and build in this world,” Chester said with a nod to their new friend. “Earth would be a new planet to us now, too, so maybe we are of more use helping the people here.”

“Shoot, boy,” Sergeant Copperfield said with a smirk. “You’re making sense. Let’s rebuild us a home.”